​The scene is the village hall in Dervaig on the Isle of Mull some 40 years ago. George ‘Faunty’ Smith from Torloisk lifts his hand from his accordion and rolls a couple of china eggs from between his legs before playing The Hens March to the Midden, reproducing the cackling high-pitched calls of the fowls on the keyboard. Is this a true memory, or part of the legend of Faunty I have heard from someone? To find out the answer I took the road to Fort William, to meet up with my fellow Muileach after all those years.“My mother came from Glasgow, but her folks were originally from Dunoon,” George recalls. “My grandmother played piano for Harry Lauder at one time. My mother Mary taught in Fanmore School in Mull.” Who was in the Smith family band? “Christine, my sister, played the accordion and piano. My mother played the piano. I played the accordion.” George started the accordion in his early teens when he was a pupil at Tobermory School. He played both by ear and sight-reading music, and had no tutor to help him develop his accordion skills. After completing his education at Oban High School he went to Glasgow in the early 1960s. He worked in an office, and on the buses, and then he went into electronics in the early days of that now universal industry.It was a good city for a young musician to settle in, because Glasgow in the 1960s had a substantial population of expatriates from the Highlands and Islands who were keen and skilled dancers. “I started playing in a band more or less as soon as I arrived in Glasgow,” George tells me. John Carmichael phoned me and asked me to play in Paisley Town Hall for a night. I started playing with Andy MacColl, whose wife was from the Ross of Mull.” I tell George that I noted the popularity of Andy MacColl’s Band while leafing through old copies of The Oban Times, showing the many dances that were held in Glasgow at the time. “Yes, you could be out playing most nights,” George remembers. He played once at a ceilidh in the Highlanders’ Institute in Elmbank Street before it moved to Berkeley Street in the early 1960s. Our conversation recreates those heady nights – midweek as well as weekends – in the Highlanders in Berkeley Street where there would be several hundred accomplished ceilidh dancers on the floor, city residents joined by Highland students – including a contingent from Mull. I can hardly believe George when he discloses that in those days the fee was 10/- for a three piece band for an evening’s dancing. George also played for a Highland Gathering in the St Andrew’s Halls (burnt out in 1962), with Will Starr and Calum Kennedy also on the bill. I was booked to accompany a Highland dancer, but I did a solo spot; it was a big occasion.” He also played in Govan Town Hall, another favoured venue of expatriate Gaels; and there were booking for weddings in hotels. I ask George about his invention of the electronic bagpipes. At the time he was accompanying that wonderful singer Iain Carmichael, Mod Gold Medalist, “Ian was also a piper. We were working on an LP in my house one night. Iain, like many pipers, took ages to tune up. The press made out that the neighbours downstairs were complaining at the noise, but they didn’t actually complain. As soon as they heard the pipes they came up for a ceilidh and a dram. But the pipes were noisy. At that time Rolf Harris has a wee electronic instrument like a xylophone (Stylophone), one of the first electronic instruments. It sounded not unlike a pipe chanter. I thought: matbe I can incorporate this into a chanter. I started off with an old coffee-table leg. I used touch buttons, the kind you used on television sets at the time. I patented it and it was marketed. The system is still available.”For 30 or so years George has been a full-time musician, a rare achievement in these times. “Over the years I’ve been fairly lucky with work.” But he acknowledges that dancing is diminishing in popularity on the Wast coast. Years ago he was asked to do a summer season in Fort William, and moved up to the town. His musical colleague Annabel Gillan is a superb fiddle player and also calls the dances in the band, The Hebrideans.George has taken his accordion worldwide, to Israel, Egypt and Russia. He and Annabel have an annual engagement in Vienna to play for a dance for the International English Schools of the United Nations. “These young people in Vienna could show us a few things about dancing.” At home, there are ceilidhs in The Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh and visites to Accordion and Fiddle Clubs. (If you haven’t heard Faunty already, invite him for a splendid evening.)So how did he acquire the name Faunty, I ask after a sufficient number of whiskies? “On Mull I stayed in Torloisk, which is about 16 miles from Tobermory. We had to stay in Tobermory for schooling during the week. A couple of boys and myself used to cycle over to Tobermory on Sunday night for a new school week and home again on a Friday evening. The other boys had Raleigh and Hercules bicycles, but mine was built from old pieces I salvaged from the dump. Someone asked me: ‘What kind of bike is that?’ and I said: That’s a faunty. ‘What do you mean by that?’ I was asked. It’s fawin’ tae bits I said. The name stuck. I get letters addresses to Faunty.”When I raise the matter of the china eggs rolled out on to the Dervaig Hall stage to introduce The Hens March to the Midden, Faunty confirms that the story is true. He still does the trick, through nowadays the eggs are plastic. He tells me that at an airport his bags were being checked for bombs. “A rather large foreign lady asked: ‘What are these?’ and I picked up the plastic eggs. I tried to explain in pidgin English: I am a musician, I play accordion, at the same time as doing all these actions. These eggs I use for show. I put them between my legs and made cackling sounds. The next thing, armed policemen were moving towards me.”Did Faunty really get so carried away while playing one night at Dervaig that his chair lifted and he fell backwards off the stage? “I don’t remember falling off the stage in Dervaig, but I do remember falling off in Helensburgh one night. I was quite sober, I had my kilt on,” he adds, leaving the rest to my imagination.After our chat, we adjourn to the Nevisport Bar. George straps on his accordion and gives us a selection of tunes, and there is room between the tables for a Canadian Barn Dance to the beautifully paced tunes Major Manson of Clackantrushal and Father John MacMillan of Barra. On the way back through the gloom of Glencoe my spirits are lifted by playing Highland Fling, the CD of George’s band The Hebrideans, on the car system. The classic West Coast sound is heard in the Gaelic waltz selection, and my wife Mary and I agree that it has been a perfect day of harmony and fond memories.

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